


teach them well and let them lead the way

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: hide and seek [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To, Angst and Humor, Complicated Friendships, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force Ghosts, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, POV Luke Skywalker, Rey Kenobi, The Force, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, no betas we die like WOMEN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-22 18:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22187884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Luke has a weird feeling about this unwanted visitor.
Relationships: (past), Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker & Ben Solo, Luke Skywalker & Rey’s Parents, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Rey, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Sabé
Series: hide and seek [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1311290
Comments: 39
Kudos: 162





	teach them well and let them lead the way

**Author's Note:**

> Someone sent me a very nice ask about this AU, which is one of my favourites, and I was so happy I wrote a fic for them...
> 
> Communicate with authors, kids! You never know! It could be you!

There was a girl in a grey poncho standing before him, holding his lightsaber out to him - the old one, the one he'd dropped in Cloud City - and Luke thought: _of course you found me_. 

Meaning Leia, not her. Although it wasn't surprising that Leia had sent a messenger who was strong in the Force; the girl's presence roared like a bonfire. Leia should have kept her, taught her some control; Luke had sensed her the moment the _Falcon_ hit atmosphere.

Luke threw the lightsaber away and walked off. 

" _What_ ," the girl yelled. She had a sharp Core accent and a great pair of lungs.

Luke hopped quickly over the side of a sheer thirty-foot cliff and hurried away, before she could yell anything else.

  
  


He had expected her to get back on the _Falcon_ and stew for a while. She sounded like one of these kids who'd grown up nice and got it into their heads that they needed to give up all their worldly belongings and travel in order to be closer to the Force, though she seemed to have done it more thoroughly than most, and she carried the staff like she knew how to use it. Leia wouldn't have sent him a fool, though she might have sent him a spoiled kid, possibly on the grounds that he deserved it. 

Except it turned out she hadn't sent one of those either. The girl did not go back to the _Falcon_ for more than an hour. She brought supplies back up to the Hermitage and set up a bare, basic camp very competently in an abandoned hut, forcing Luke to sneak around and hide his presence in a way that hadn’t been necessary for at least a decade. She was sharp, so sharp Luke quickly revised his original assessment and wondered where the hell a kid like that - so plainly used to living on the edges - had picked up an accent like that, which didn't belong to any kind of edge. She reacted to the rain like she'd never seen it before. She spoke, or rather swore in, Huttese, too - gutter Huttese too low-down to ever have earned a gutter, with such a heavy drawling Western Reaches accent that Luke had to listen hard to be sure it was Huttese. And the more he listened the more he thought she seemed familiar, and not in a Force-related kind of way.

One night he dreamed of Kyrie's tired brown eyes that looked nothing like this girl's, and the brisk competence of him moving around the _Padmé Amidala_ 's second medical bay, a perfect mirror to Limia in the hangars moving among her squadron, and Kyrie turned to him with that look of exasperation Luke remembered so well, put his hands on his hips, and said "You know, the trouble with you, Luke -"

But Luke didn't hear Kyrie finish that familiar sentence, because a rock crashed through the air and bounced off one of his shutters. Luke sat bolt upright and scrambled out of bed to wrench the door open. Another rock almost wiped out the Hero of Yavin, and the girl - who was obviously trying to meditate in the grey pre-dawn light, and not doing a very good job of it - dropped three inches to the floor and fell over, along with all the other rocks. Her eyes shot open, and she stared at Luke, mouth half-open. Belatedly, Luke realised that this was the first time she had seen him for several days.

Luke pointed a minatory finger at her. "Do _not_ do that!"

He slammed his door shut again, and, in the echoes, thought suddenly - why did I dream of Kyrie?

Why now?

Luke leaned hard against the door.

He had known the other man well for years. Back when they were on Hoth with the Alliance, Kyrie had taught him a lot of the basics about handling the Force - things he had learned in deadly secrecy from a tutor he rarely referred to - but Luke tried not to think about him these days. He hadn't been a good friend to Kyrie, in the end, any more than he'd been a good brother to Leia, and Kyrie would not understand why he had abandoned them both by choosing exile on Ahch-To. He wasn't alone in that. Luke had not tried to explain, knowing no-one would understand. He hadn't even gone down to the _Falcon_ to say hello to Chewie, or to look for Artoo; after so many years alone with his own self-recrimination, knowing there were others who had earned their anger at him, he hadn't been able to face it. Han was probably there, too - Luke had intentionally curbed his senses, preferring not to know for sure, because he felt even less prepared to meet Han, who had double the right to his anger. In the end, which of them had run out on Leia? 

Luke yanked his thoughts back to the task at hand. His concern for Kyrie’s anger, specifically, wasn't just that Kyrie would take his departure personally. Kyrie was very practical, and (like Leia) focussed very heavily on concrete action and a personal sense of duty as an anchor against the Dark. Luke flinched at the thought of Kyrie's reaction to his self-imposed exile, his decision to act by not acting at all: he'd imagined it so often he felt like he'd already heard the shouting. 

Except that he hadn't seen Kyrie or Kyrie’s wife Limia, not even once, since he had turned on Ben, and Ben had destroyed the Second Jedi Temple. He had not quite travelled beyond the reach of the holonews when he heard that Limia's New Republic ship, en route for the Tatooine Free System, had been hijacked, her husband shot, and her four-year-old daughter disappeared in an escape pod somewhere in the Western Reaches. Luke had known a long few days of indecision then, pulled back by old friendships, unsure if Kyrie would even survive his wounds - the news had painted an unpleasant picture.

But then word had come that Kyrie was stable. And Luke's purpose in taking himself out of the known galaxy had been reaffirmed. No-one needed him as much as they needed his absence, not even Leia, who would never win her fight for peace while the Jedi were still in existence. So he'd carried on. He didn’t know how well Kyrie had recovered, or if he and Limia had divorced: losing a child was a powerful strain on a marriage. He didn’t know if they had found their daughter.

Kyrie's daughter, he thought, Kyrie's powerfully Force-sensitive four-year-old daughter, whose escape pod had disappeared in the Western Reaches. 

Luke let his head rest against the door, and let his underused senses unfurl, comparing his memories of a well-nourished, happy and privileged little girl with the scrappy, lean adult who (by the sound of it) was currently tidying up outside. It was hard to be certain, after so many years, and hardship would have wrought major changes, but there were significant commonalities. A determined, pragmatic quality to her Force presence, the tone of her anger. Luke had seen holos of the late Sabé Theodora, and little Maré had promised to bear the same strong bones and stubborn chin; but her eyes had been hazel like her mother's, and there was something about this girl's eagle-like stare that reminded Luke forcibly of Limia. And then there was that weird accent.

Was it too much of a coincidence? It had to be.

Luke opened the door again. The girl was trying to put a cairn back together, but she looked up when the door swung open.

"What's your name?" he said. The sun was rising over the sea in a painted blaze of yellow and pink.

"Rey."

Luke's heart jumped. "What's your full name?"

"Rey," she repeated. "That's it. Just Rey."

Perhaps it was too good to be true. Leia would have investigated, anyway. She would not have sent Rey here if the girl was Maré. She would have sent Rey straight to Naboo at the first opportunity. Wouldn’t she?

Luke shut the door again.

  
  


Two nights later, Luke woke up because rocks were crashing around outside again - only this time louder and more frequently. Torn between annoyance and a faint flicker of concern - Rey lacked experience: she would hurt herself if she carried on like this - Luke climbed out of bed and stormed out of his hut, only to be seized from behind and lifted off the ground by a warm and unfriendly Wookiee bearhug. All the rocks dropped out of the air at once, and Artoo lit up a jury-rigged set of very bright floodlights. 

Godsdamnit. He'd forgotten about Chewie. Or rather, he hadn't, but after accustoming himself to Chewie's presence in the distance he had stopped feeling it acutely, and with Rey deliberately pouring off power like a volcano in full flow, he hadn't noticed Chewie’s approach. Chewie must have come up while Luke was sleeping… and lugged Artoo with him, maybe. Artoo couldn't have done those steps without boosters unless someone had replaced the canisters, like Luke had meant to, right up until he realised Ben was lost.

_You faithless organic bastard_ , Artoo weebled furiously. _I could electrocute you myself. Do you know how fucking long it's been?_

_He's mine_ , Chewie rumbled. _For Han and Leia's sake. Join the fucking queue, you bucket of bolts._

_Switch off, you mouldy old carpet._

Rey, ominously silent, folded her arms. Both Chewie and Artoo shut up.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of bad news to hear," Rey said, in a very level voice. "We're going back to the _Falcon_."

"What, now?" Luke said, taken aback.

"Sorry I didn't make an appointment," Rey said, in a very familiar snide tone. 

There was something behind her, a faint wisp, a bluish flicker. Luke squinted at it, then blinked, and was shocked when it reformed and he recognised the face of his old mentor, his first teacher, the one ghost he had never been able to call on in all his time on Ahch-To.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was laughing.

"This is all your own fault, you know," Obi-Wan said, with unmistakable pride. Nobody else reacted. "Had you been reasonable, none of this would have been necessary."

"Was this your idea?" Luke demanded.

Rey glared. "Obviously."

"Maré came up with it all by herself," Obi-Wan said, smiling. "She can sometimes hear me, but I'm talking to you, Luke."

That answered that.

"Will you walk or is Chewbacca going to have to carry you?" Rey asked crisply.

Luke gave up on getting control of this situation.

"Aw, _shit_ ," he groaned. “Put me down. I’ll cooperate.”

"That's the spirit," said Obi-Wan.


End file.
